


Bitter Mercies

by AsheRhyder



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Minor Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 22:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3745705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsheRhyder/pseuds/AsheRhyder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>	“You always do this!” Cole yells back. “It hurts you and you hold it inside so no one can help you. Why do you always do that? I want to help!” </i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There's a song, hurtful and hateful, burning on the outside and freezing the inside. Cole can hear it, and he follows it to its hidden host. </p><p>Dorian would have kept this from him, if he could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter Mercies

  
    Everything seems fine until about two weeks after the final battle. Corypheus falls, but the world moves on. Everyone gets caught up in planning for the future now that they actually have one to consider. A third of the Inner Circle is busy planning for the selection and ascension of the new Divine. Those who aren’t have tasks of their own. Bull and the Chargers head out to Western Orlais to clear out a few remaining pockets of Venatori who don’t know they’re beat yet. Blackwall leaves to become a proper Grey Warden. Sera goes to answer more requests for the Friends of Red Jenny. Solas is just gone. Varric stays at Skyhold for now, at least until he’s done immortalizing the Inquisition’s rise to power.  
  
    It falls to Cole to notice the strange tension to Dorian’s shoulders as he makes arrangements to return to Tevinter.  
  
    There’s no need for the ability to hear thoughts to know how little Dorian wants to go. His face tells that story clearly enough. But underneath the pain of the imminent parting there is another song, harsh and angry, and it draws Cole to the library where Dorian sits wrapped in a blanket and the thickest of his robes. The mage has an open book on his lap, but in the fifteen minutes Cole stands to try and decipher the song, not a single page turns.  
  
    The library is empty now, researchers scattering to disperse their findings across the continent. There’s no one to comment about the strangeness of Dorian’s choice of attire. There’s no one to notice him shiver, even beneath the heavy layers. No one but Cole.  
  
    “Fire burning on the outside, but ice within, crystalizing everything. Freezing time, freezing clocks, freezing beats; how many left? How far to run? How long before—” Cole stops himself with wide eyes. “The red lyrium. It’s _inside_ you.”  
  
    Dorian’s eyes flicker up, and crimson flecks glimmer amidst the silver, traces of the thing that’s eating at him.  
  
    “I should have known you would figure it out,” he sighs. “I don’t know if you’re even capable, but I’d thank you to keep it to yourself.”  
  
    “Why?” Cole asks, more confused than hurt.  
  
    “Because there’s nothing to be done.” Dorian shakes his head and crosses his arms. “It happened during our last battle. We’re all going our separate ways. Half are gone already. Why worry those who remain?”  
  
    “The Inquisitor— she could help you—”  
      
    “Ah, no.” His voice goes flat and sharp as one of Cole’s knives. “She’s seen enough of her friends consumed by this shit. I won’t have her watch it again.”  
  
    “It’s a ghost in your heads — things you’ve seen no one else will ever know.” Cole frowns. “She saved them. She can save you.”  
  
    “She saved them by preventing that future from happening,” Dorian replies. “But there’s no time distortion here. We’ve faced Red Templars for the last year. Between Dagna and Sampson, if there was anything that could be done, we’d know it by now.”  
  
    “But the song— it’s hurting you!” Cole takes a step closer, but immediately falls back as Dorian jumps to his feet, eyes flashing crimson.  
  
    “Cole! You will _not_ tell anyone of this!” He shouts, louder than he would have if there were anyone left to hear him. But above and below are empty, as empty as the vicious hollow timbre to his voice. The air around him is warmer, half humming with the song of the red lyrium calcifying around his bones. Some of the heat is magic, but the rest is fever. Despite the temperature, all he feels inside is cold.  
  
    “You always do this!” Cole yells back. “It hurts you and you hold it inside so no one can help you. Why do you always do that? I want to help!” Cole has yet to cry, even after becoming too human to be bound as a spirit, but he sounds close to it now. The break in his voice is enough to shake Dorian out of the flickering red rage that grows at the edges of his consciousness. Slowly, deliberately, he uncrosses his arms and unclenches his fists.  
      
    “If you tell her, she’ll run herself ragged trying to save me. I won’t be another burden for her. I saw how it affected Vivienne in the alternate future. I have some time. I can still—” He stops, breath catching in his throat on the very beginning of a rasp. He inhales slowly. “I can still try to change my homeland before…”  
  
    A frustrated keening claws its way from Cole’s too-human throat.  
  
    “I want to help.”  
  
    “But you can’t, can you? Not without a knife. You’re a mercy, not a miracle.”  
  
    Cole shakes his head furiously.  
  
    “I can’t, but the Inquisitor—”  
  
    “ _No_ , Cole.” It’s somehow worse to hear it without the heat of the lyrium under his voice. It’s cold, dead, whatever’s left after despair drains all the energy away, and so very wrong.  
  
    “But she’s your friend!” He wails, trying wrench some emotion from Dorian other than the glacial logic that pervades in the absence of the fire.  
  
    “Best and only, yes, I know, but I will not—” Dorian freezes when Cole steps too close, the brim of his hat brushing against his shoulder.  
  
    “Not only,” he whispers. His eyes are terrifyingly wide, the color of the sky over distant hills and mist over too-deep lakes.  
  
    “What?” Dorian blinks.  
  
    “Not your only friend,” Cole says. “We’re here. I’m here.”  
  
    Dorian stares. He draws in another long breath, shaky, but the rasp is less prominent. He starts to reach out, but stops himself before putting his hand on Cole’s shoulder. It drops to his side instead.  
  
    “If I could have,” he murmurs, “I would have kept this from you, too.”  
  
    “Back against the wall and terrors underfoot, sky and stone switch places, and the red sinks deep in on the way down. Burning in the blood, no time for this, not now, not so close to the end. Fight harder, and if you fall, the red won’t matter, it won’t grow, she won’t have to see it again.” Cole’s hands twist in his sleeves. “I wouldn’t want it kept from me. She wouldn’t, either.”  
  
    “The alternative is to saddle her with the knowledge that Corypheus got one final jab at the Inquisition, and she can’t do anything about it.” Dorian shakes his head. “It’s better this way. She gets to keep smiling, and I get to take one last stab at redeeming my homeland. Everybody’s happy.”  
  
    “Until you die,” Cole says, and the bright, fragile smile on Dorian’s face fractures.  
  
    “Yes, until that part.” Annoyance simmers the red, and he covers his eyes with one hand. He can’t feel any of the warmth that radiates from it.  
  
    “Will it do to you what it did to the Templars?” Cole asks, sounding younger than anything ageless ought to.  
  
    “It didn’t take Vivienne that way, but she also died fighting demons before it visibly showed.” Dorian winces at the memory — he had only a glimpse, too focused on getting the amulet to work to pay attention to an ending he hoped to prevent, but he remembers the look it put on the Inquisitor’s face. That much is seared into his memory, aggravated by recent developments. “I have some time. If it gets too bad… I’ll deal with it.”  
  
    Cole’s eyes widen, darting across his face in a way that makes Dorian feel like the contents of his thoughts are written there for the spirit-boy to read.  
  
    “You’re going to disappear, like Solas did.”  
  
    “There are plenty of ways to tragically pass on in a country where dinner table assassinations are as common as dessert.” Dorian waves off the comment. “Given what I intend to do there, if I’m not brutally murdered in a fortnight, I’ll consider it a personal failing.”  
  
    “I can help you,” Cole says, becoming very still, eyes like the ice that creeps in Dorian’s veins.  
  
    “You are _not_ telling her—”  
      
    “I’m going with you.”  
  
    “What?”  
  
    “When you go, I’m going with you. If the red does to you what it did to the Templars, I will stop you. If the pain gets too much…”  
  
    There’s a promise in the silence, a soundless offer that hangs between them on the thinnest gossamer. Dorian meets the snow-shadow gaze across from him and tries not to feel ashamed of his plan.  
  
    “I couldn’t ask that of you,” he murmurs, and Cole frowns.  
  
    “You aren’t asking. I’m telling.” Cole crosses his arms and tilts his head the way he has often seen others do, Dorian especially when being defiant and determined. The expression is so strange and unsuited to his face that it startles a laugh out of the mage.  
  
    “Is that the deal, then? You come with me to Tevinter in exchange for not telling the Inquisitor?”  
  
    “That’s the deal,” Cole nods, then frowns. “I don’t like it. You should tell her. It will hurt her when she finds out.”  
  
    “She’s not going to find out, because no one else is going to find out to tell her.” Dorian smiles without humor, sharp and flat like a knife blade. “And I don’t like it much either, but that’s the thing about compromise: everyone’s unhappy together.”  
  
      
    Dorian leaves Skyhold three days later, and Cole goes with him. There are a few raised eyebrows, most of which are eased with the explanation that the former spirit ought to learn what the world is like when it’s not on the brink of destruction, and one distasteful joke about Dorian getting custody in his and the Iron Bull’s breakup, which Dorian dismisses with bared teeth. If anyone had a custody battle over Cole, it was Varric and Solas, and Varric remains the undisputed winner.  
  
    Cole, listening all too closely to the angry song under Dorian’s heartbeat, hears the stuttering skip at the mention of the Bull and sees just one more sacrifice to the things Dorian will not say.  
  
    They head north.  
  
    Cole has been uncertain before, has felt regret and remorse as keenly — if not as quickly — as anyone born mortal, but rarely has he doubted the way he does now, following Dorian.  
  
    The mage radiates heat like a furnace, burning through a fever that refuses to die, but when Cole listens, he hears how cold Dorian feels. There are flickering memories of Emprise du Lion, a winter that froze the heart of the town, mountains swathed in ice, and the red lyrium shot through it all like veins. It’s too apt and disturbing a comparison to countenance.  
  
    He thinks the mage may have misjudged Vivienne’s state in the future that didn’t happen, because his own deteriorates so quickly and fiercely that Cole begins to wonder if Dorian will even make it _to_ Tevinter.  
  
    Twice, Cole attempts to get Dorian to turn around and go back for help. The first time he uses words; they’re returned harshly, and with flickers of fire in the air. These flames are not as friendly as Cole remembers.  
  
    The second time, Cole reorients things in camp while Dorian is sleeping so that when they leave, Dorian starts heading back the way they came. The deception doesn’t last long; Dorian has spent enough time on his own in the wild to make his way around, at least once he’s properly awake.  
  
    Dorian scowls and snaps until his temper exhausts him, and Cole listens to the guilt for it seep in like a flood to drown the heat.  
  
    Once, only once, Cole decides to go back and get help on his own.  
 

   “Suit yourself, but don’t expect me to be waiting for you to return.” Dorian’s frown is deflective; the anger that stirs under his dismissive barb is constructed by the red lyrium, not him. Cole can hear the pained, bleeding cry underneath:  
  
_Don’t go._  
  
_Don’t leave me._  
  
_You said you’d end it for me._  
  
_I’m scared to do this alone now._  
  
    Dorian voices none of it; if he can tell Cole heard his heart by the way Cole stays, he never mentions. 

  
  
    Things take a bitter turn when they reach the Waking Sea. There are bandits along the coast, groups that are too scared to operate in Inquisition protected territory proper, but instead lurk on the fringes where Cullen’s patrols are spread thinner and are easier to avoid.  
  
    Cole and Dorian have been lucky until now, but the thing about luck is that it runs out, and when it does for them, it does so cataclysmically.  
  
    Dorian’s lungs start to give out, struggling with the humidity as a passel of bandits close in on them. Cole could disappear, but there are too many for one rogue to take out, and it would leave Dorian completely at their mercy. He can’t even stop coughing long enough to raise his head.  
  
    The bandits sneer and jeer, but Cole can barely hear it over the raging song that quakes in Dorian’s bones, hungry and hateful, howling to hurt. It’s so loud, so very close to the surface, that when Cole draws his daggers, he’s not sure if they’re for the bandits or for the mage. It sings so loud that it screams. Dorian screams with it. And then, suddenly, shockingly, silence.  
  
    Then the fire comes.  
  
    Dorian looks up, eyes red as corruption, and flames sear across the Veil. The blaze blinds Cole, white hot and stifling, suffocating. It’s over in a moment, but it’s a moment that feels like a lifetime. For the bandits, it’s the _end_ of a lifetime.  
  
    When Cole’s vision clears, he and Dorian are alone again. The only sign that there was ever anyone there are a few molten scraps of metal that are more magically resistant than their bearers. The very earth beneath them feels dead, all the life burned out of it.  
  
    “Well. That was... invigorating.” Dorian says lightly. The rasp is gone from his lungs, and though he is still far too warm, there is warmth inside him now, too. The song is quiet. Uncontested. He stands without pain. Without exhaustion. Without fear. He flexes his fingers and breathes deeply.  
  
    He smiles.  
  
    His eyes glitter red.  
  
    Cole can barely hear him at all anymore, just a concerned ripple beneath the crystalized surface: if the red lyrium enhances abilities exponentially, if the cost is also exponential, if magic depletes the red the way it does regular lyrium, if using it halts the growth, if it negates the symptoms, if, if, if…    
      
    ...if the madness comes, will he notice?  
  
        ...if it comes, will he care?  
  
            … Cole…  
  
        … don’t hurt Cole…  
  
    … he’s all that’s left…  
  
        ...don’t…  
  
                — _Cole, you promised_ —  
  
    It fades, and no matter how hard he strains, he can’t hear it anymore. Dorian rambles on to the empty air, positing possibilities that are as clear to Cole as gravity to a rock. The ideas mirror the theories lost inside, but lack the echo of desperation.  
  
    “Do you know what this means?” Dorian asks, a smile on his face that gives Cole no comfort whatsoever.  
  
    “What?” Cole misses that whisper already; the absence of it builds like dread in his chest.  
  
    “I can get through this,” Dorian replies. “I can use it. I can turn it to my advantage!”  
  
    ~ _Don’t go there, Sparkler. Don’t wonder if it’s useful. Don’t even think about it._ ~ Cole remembers Varric saying, but it’s too late, isn’t it? He’s there, beyond wondering and heading for beyond reasoning.  
  
    Cole watches as Dorian walks on, rambling about a future he now has hope again to see. He spins plans like the stuff of dreams, golden and glittering, but underneath them and inside them is the red. The red hides within words like ‘acceptable losses’ and ‘necessary sacrifices’ and ‘the end justifies the means’, words that wound like thorns and scar impetus with indifference of execution.  
  
    He holds on to the hurt that settles in his own heart like a lead weight and sounds like his name in Dorian’s fading voice. It tastes like the ashes of something beautiful burned to nothing, and he realizes that it belongs to him and him alone; no one else can see it. No one else can feel it. Dorian would have kept it from him if he could, but he couldn’t, and now Cole is more real  for it.  
  
    Cole made a promise, and the promise makes him real, too.  
  
        Mercy is bitter on his tongue. 


End file.
